The Essence of Budo by Dave Lowry

Author:Dave Lowry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala

19

SOUL BUDO

WHEN I WAS A KID and was around a lot of older college guys from Hawaii, the subject of surfing often came up. Many of my seniors in budo were surfers. This was back in the sixties, when surfing was still an amateur diversion. Hawaii had a few local competitions. But the days of pro surfing, with corporate sponsors and full-time surfers, was still way off in the future. Even then, though, I remember hearing about guys who called themselves “soul surfers.” They used the term to distinguish themselves from the surfers who entered competitions to have their rides judged by a panel and who collected trophies and championships. Soul surfers liked to define themselves by their purity and their ideals. They surfed, they insisted, for the art of it all.

I thought of those soul surfers recently when an old friend wrote to tell me of his experience of getting back into karate after having left it for more than twenty years. He is nearly sixty now, and he would be the first to admit that a lot of couch-camping has diminished his stamina and strength. Still, he’s determined to go as far as he can. He wants to retrace the steps along the Way he took earlier in life and, if possible, perhaps even to go past where he was before. Age and its limitations can slow one’s steps on this path. But the added wisdom and insights of maturity can make the journey more rewarding as well.

“I can judge my own progress and I don’t care about testing,” he told me.

I would agree with him wholeheartedly on the whole testing mess that has come to be a feature of karate and all the other budo. The more rank tests have become institutionalized as a part of budo training, the more vulnerable these arts have become to rot and to the insincerity of overcommercialism. Do you really think there is a noticeable, objective difference between a third-kyu and a first-kyu, for example? Testing has encouraged teachers to become stingy. If I give my student a rank that allows him to test people himself, those people no longer come to me to pay their testing fees. They go to my authorized student, depriving me of the income they represent. Naturally, placing all this emphasis on testing also cheats students by encouraging them to look at promotions as a real measure of their progress.

I would disagree, however, when my friend says he can judge his own progress. I doubt it. I have written probably more than anyone about the hypocrisy of modern budo ranking systems and their abuse. However, criticizing the unsavory elements attending to the ranking process is not the same as criticizing the system itself.

The surfers out there waiting to catch a wave, disdaining competitions, in it only for the love of it all, can argue a precedent of sorts. The native Hawaiians who originated the sport didn’t leave any record of contests. So the soul surfer might have a point in saying he’s returning to a purer moment in wave riding.

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